Moby Dick: or, the White Whale eBook

This done, Perth was about to begin welding the twelve
into one, when Ahab stayed his hand, and said he would
weld his own iron. As, then, with regular, gasping
hems, he hammered on the anvil, Perth passing to him
the glowing rods, one after the other, and the hard
pressed forge shooting up its intense straight flame,
the Parsee passed silently, and bowing over his head
towards the fire, seemed invoking some curse or some
blessing on the toil. But, as Ahab looked up,
he slid aside.

“What’s that bunch of lucifers dodging
about there for?” muttered Stubb, looking on
from the forecastle. “That Parsee smells
fire like a fusee; and smells of it himself, like
a hot musket’s powder-pan.”

At last the shank, in one complete rod, received its
final heat; and as Perth, to temper it, plunged it
all hissing into the cask of water near by, the scalding
steam shot up into Ahab’s bent face.

“Would’st thou brand me, Perth?”
wincing for a moment with the pain; “have I
been but forging my own branding-iron, then?”

“Pray God, not that; yet I fear something, Captain
Ahab. Is not this harpoon for the White Whale?”

“For the white fiend! But now for the
barbs; thou must make them thyself, man. Here
are my razors—­the best of steel; here,
and make the barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the
Icy Sea.”

For a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as
though he would fain not use them.

“Take them, man, I have no need for them; for
I now neither shave, sup, nor pray till—­but
here—­to work!”

Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded
by Perth to the shank, the steel soon pointed the
end of the iron; and as the blacksmith was about giving
the barbs their final heat, prior to tempering them,
he cried to Ahab to place the water-cask near.

“No, no—­no water for that; I want
it of the true death-temper. Ahoy, there!
Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans!
Will ye give me as much blood as will cover this
barb?” holding it high up. A cluster of
dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were
made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale’s
barbs were then tempered.

Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting
one of hickory, with the bark still investing it,
Ahab fitted the end to the socket of the iron.
A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some
fathoms of it taken to the windlass, and stretched
to a great tension. Pressing his foot upon it,
till the rope hummed like a harp-string, then eagerly
bending over it, and seeing no strandings, Ahab exclaimed,
“Good! and now for the seizings.”